Windows 11 - Can't switch out of S mode

Thanks Jen. I appreciate your suggestions. I reckon this is a community channel and as an independent advisor, I surmise you don't actually work at Microsoft and you're just trying to help out here. I do appreciate that.

When I set up the computer, I did create the user as a local account only, without a Microsoft account, as you suggested. Later, I created a Microsoft account so that I could use it to access the Windows Store. Without doing that, there's no way to even load up the store to get to the "Get Out of S Mode" application. So this whole experience is quite frustrating. You have to create a Microsoft account, even if you don't want one, in order to get to the store in order to at least have a hope of running "Get Out of S Mode" which doesn't even work after you do that.

It's not your fault of course, and again, I know as a community member you're just trying to help. I only point this out because there are a lot of red herring suggestions on the Internet, and when one searches the Internet for questions such as this, they are likely to land on the Microsoft Answers page and read threads such as this one.

Personally I would never buy a computer with Windows S mode, but this computer is for my mother-in-law and they purchased this HP computer on Amazon without realizing that it came with Windows S mode. Why Microsoft insists on creating so many roadblocks to user happiness is beyond me. It confounds me that Microsoft makes the kind of suboptimal decisions that it does. If they wanted to create an extra safe mode version of Windows, there must be a better way of doing it than this. It should work in the reverse direction. All computers should come with regular ole Windows, and then there should be a way to switch it into S mode for those who want an extra secure environment. These are just a few of the reasons I don't even use Windows computers anymore. For software development, I use Linux, and for Adobe and other things that don't run on Linux, I use a Mac. I have an old Windows desktop computer, but I never even bother booting it up any more.

Thanks again for your help.

Hi Kevin,

Try to create a new user account and switch out of S mode from there. Go to Settings > Accounts > Other Users > Add account > Select I don’t have this person’s sign-in information > Add a user without a Microsoft account. Then, enter a username and password to create a local account. Now, launch Microsoft store and see if you'll be able to exit of S mode. Let me know how it goes.

Thanks.

I've updated everything I can. I've rebooted the computer multiple times to ensure all updates are installed. There is no VPN running. This is a brand new, fresh, out-of-the-box computer. Switch out of S Mode simply refuses to run. It simply returns the error I mentioned at the beginning ("Something happened and we couldn't start the upgrade").

Hi Kevin,

Have you updated all the apps in Microsoft Store? Open the Store app, click on the Library icon, click on Get Updates to check for available updates then click Update all. Once finished, restart your computer and try switching out of S mode again. If you have a VPN on, temporarily disable it and check if it helps as well. Let me know how it goes.

Thanks.

Thank you for the suggestions.

I've installed all updates and restarted the computer multiple times.

I ran wsreset.exe but it still didn't fix the problem.